Staring at the blank screen, watching the cursor appear and then disappear in perpetuity. Waiting. Watching. Mocking.

BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.

My mind is as vacant as that blindingly white and empty screen in front of me. There are no thoughts swirling around in preparation to travel down to my finger tips onto a keyboard that will transform them into pure brilliant prose on that computer monitor. Nothing to kick-start the ole noggin into action. Just . . . nothing.

BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.

The many attempts to create some nugget of an idea that would then transform itself into a topic have as of yet been unsuccessful. I remain staring at an abyss of nothingness, sucking me in to its realm of glaringly bright white absence. Caring not of my suffering and desperate attempts to fill it with stark black symbols representing a coherent thought.

BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.

What may truly only be moments staring at the screen, feels like a vast eternity living in the wastelands of an inability to create. Purgatory in a hell that only a certain breed of person can experience. A self-inflicted pain only thrust upon those who attempt to create words as their vocation or recreation. For only those tragic few have felt the terror and horror of a mind without thought or concept, and experienced the endless struggle to extract something from pure nothingness.

BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.

The emptiness of the screen is a perfect mirror reflecting the dearth of ideas within my head. A vast desert of tiny bits of useless particles of thought, swirling in the winds of struggle, and baking in the exploding starlike pressure of forced thoughts. As dry and barren as a summer afternoon in the Sahara.

BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.

And then . . . a glimmer. A single molecule of hope. Could it be . . . an idea? I hold on tight, trying to contain but not smother this precious gem of a thought, hopeful that I can fan the slight embers into flames of sentences and paragraphs. But how to shape it? How best to transform this crumb of a possibility into a hearty stew upon which the mind and soul can feast? What is the best way to create a masterpiece out of this one lone insubstantial speck of dust floating through my cranium?

BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.

There is no answer. And then, the thought begins to float away. So, I grasp onto it with all my might and do the only thing that I am able to do. The only thing anyone can ever do when caught in a maelstrom of nothingness . . .

A rotten onion that rebelled at the bottom of a bowl full of its otherwise healthy friends, this black sheep traitor decided to be a beacon to every fruit fly in the immediate area, and possibly the entire state of Maryland.

When scrubbing down my kitchen counters last week, I discovered this putrid veggie, and when I removed it from the bowl, a cloud of black swarming bugs was released on my unwitting kitchen. Fruit flies dispersed throughout the room, landing on my fruit bowl, in the trashcan and over by the garbage disposal. Once they were all spread out, it wasn’t as obvious that they were even there. But that was their devious plan. To make you think they were just a few little bugs just hanging out not hurting anybody. But they were plotting. And worse than that, they were fucking. It was a fruit fly orgy going on in my kitchen, and just a few dispersed flies became A BAJILLIONTY MILLIONTY FLIES. Within a few days, they were every-fucking-where.

After a few days of their multiplying and generally annoying the bejeesus out of me, I figured that I would have to call in the professionals. A call placed to Terminix revealed that the first appointment they had available was a full week and a half away. Apparently, summer is a big time for bugs. Who knew?

Knowing that I would not be able to withstand the onslaught for that long, I looked into some alternate solutions while I was waiting for the bug men to come to my rescue. A friend suggested a home remedy that consisted of Cider Vinegar and dishsoap, which was presumably supposed to attract the little buggers and then drown them. It worked . . .

A bowl of death. Beautiful, beautiful death.

. . . at first. But, just as I began to fall into a soft blanket of false hope, it appeared that they regrouped and came back even stronger! Even with THREE bowls in the kitchen, you still couldn’t open the trashcan lid without getting a face full of swarming black menace. My kids refused to throw anything away. I had to reexamine my options, so back to consult the great and powerful Oz of information I went . . . Mr. Google.

Based on a comment on one website about homemade fruit fly traps, I decided to get proactive. I got out the vacuum cleaner. Now, usually when my family sees me with the vacuum cleaner, they can only assume that we are having guests for our twice yearly social gatherings. But this time, I planted that sucker in the kitchen, set up the long pole-like attachment thingy, and basically just started sucking those things right out of the air and into their deaths.

I may have looked like a crazy woman, waving a wand of suckage around the kitchen, banging on the trashcan lid to release my enemies, and jabbing and poking at counters and bowls. But rather than insane, I like to think of myself as more of a warrior. And with my trusty weapon, I was eradicating this invasion of pests that were plaguing my home. I would not be bested by a beast the size of half a grain of uncooked rice! I was bigger, I was stronger, and I had modern technology on my side. Sure, I was outnumbered. But that would not deter me. I would prevail. Victory would be mine!

Today is the anniversary of the first day I started my current hellish job. Twelve years. It feels like an eternity, but it doesn’t quite qualify for that status. When I started this job I was a wee tot. I was 26 years old, about a year out of law school, dating my husband (we wouldn’t be engaged for another month), and living in a small condo with my dog. Kids were not even on my radar at that point. And you know what? I loved the job. It was the first job I ever had that I was actually excited to go to. I looked forward to getting out of bed in the morning. And that lasted for a few years, which is quite a feat considering how jaded and burned out I am from the same job at this point. But at the beginning, I couldn’t be more satisfied with my employ. I wasn’t paid much, being that I was a public servant, but it was enough to pay my bills and was the first really substantial and consistent paycheck I had ever received. Things were good.

Cut to about 10 years later . . . a marriage, a house, 2 kids, another house. Life was different. Fuller. But now, I wasn’t jumping out of bed in the morning to go to work. Getting out of bed was a herculean effort. I was heavier, in many ways. I was more weighted down. And I was searching for something. I didn’t know what I needed, but I knew that I needed an outlet. A different path. A distraction.

Thus this blog was born. Two years ago.* Actually, 2 years ago as of 3 days ago. I missed the actual date. I feel a little guilty that I wasn’t paying attention closely enough to recognize the blog’s actual anniversary date. Sorry, girl. It wasn’t an intentional slight. I’ve just been . . . weighted again.

I never wanted this blog to feel like an obligation. Something I had to drag myself out of bed to do, like my current job. I love to write, I love the blog and I especially love the blogging community and the myriad of close friends I have made since beginning this journey. I would never go back, and don’t regret one minute of my time as a blogger, despite the negative connotations that the word may have in general society. As I’ve stated before, I found my tribe while blogging, and it was the best thing that could have happened to me at the time. It made me finally feel like I belonged to something, and that there were other outcasts and introverts out there that knew just how I felt. I didn’t feel so alone anymore. Like a stranger with my face pressed up against the glass of society, looking inside at the “normal” people. I didn’t need to stand out in the cold any longer. I had finally found my people.

All of this is to say that I just don’t really know what path this blog will take in its 3rd year of existence. Maybe it’s just a pedestrian case of writer’s block. Or possibly in my cyclical ebb and flow of creativity, I am in the far reaches of my ebb. Maybe it’s just the heat. Whatever it might be, I have not felt like I’ve had much to share lately. I was trying to steer the blog in a new direction for a while, focusing on more actual writing, and less goofy pictures of people dressed badly. I think I was moderately successful on that path for a while, but now the well has run dry of ideas. I’ve been trying to dredge up something, anything, but alas, there is naught.

Seriously, that last sentence up there. Could that be any more pretentious and dense? This is what I’m dealing with, people. This is where my mind is.

So, for now, I would not expect much to come from the blog. I am going on vacation in a couple of weeks, and hopefully that will prompt my storytelling juices to flow once again. A trip to the beach with my crazy extended family is always good for a story or two. If something strikes me before then, I will definitely share. But I can’t make any promises.

And to all of the newbies who have recently followed me, I know. Bad timing, right? But I want to say thanks for coming along on this journey with me, even though nobody knows where it will take us yet. And I promise that I will get back to it, and hopefully will produce something worth reading again. It just might take me a bit to get back on that horse. Hang in there, if you would. To new and old, good friends or hail fellows well met, it may be a bumpy ride, but it will be one worth taking . . . at least I hope so.

See you soon!

*(If you are new here and want the full history of how I actually started the blog, check out my 1 year anniversary post).